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Dec 5, 2017

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1014: Ninja High Yearbook #3, 1991 (Ninja High School Week!)

https://www.comics.org/issue/259045/

Given that this is Ben Dunn's book, I don't know that I've read too much of his actual work.

Today's comic demonstrates something that I think is somewhat unique to Ninja High School, or perhaps to Antarctic Press. This comic is full of submissions from fans of the series telling stories of their favourite characters from the main comic. And it's solicited and published by Antarctic Press. That's a level of fan-interaction I've never seen from a comics publisher before. Imagine Marvel publishing a comic full of fan-drawn and written stories starring the Avengers. Even in our ultra-connected modern day we don't see that kind of interaction, though it certainly would be very easy to do. That Mr. Dunn was open to this speaks volumes of his understanding of the relationship fans can have with a comic. We get very, very attached to characters sometimes. I can't even begin to tell you the number of Doom Patrol scripts I have locked away in my head. So to be able to tell a story about them that is published by the very people who brought you those characters, that's something special.

The stories vary, of course, in quality and tone. Some are quite dramatic, others parodic, and others romantic. Each is created by people who obviously love the characters they're dealing with, and even though the art is of less-than-professional quality sometimes, the stories achieve a level of quality simply by virtue of that love.

Fanfic comics. From adoring fans. In 1991. Neat.

To be continued.

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